


the smiles that win, the tints that glow

by fairytiger



Category: Whiskey Cavalier (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-11 01:56:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18420459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytiger/pseuds/fairytiger
Summary: “Remember the selfie we took with baby Will? I told you I was going to send it to my parents? Tell them I got married, had a kid, it would be a big joke...I may have forgotten to tell them it was a joke.”





	the smiles that win, the tints that glow

Frankie’s gotten good at reading Will.

She could cite her extensive training for that, but really it’s just that Will has so little to hide. Real Will, that is. Not the one who seamlessly blends into covers, but the one she sees in the quiet moments, however rare they are these days. 

It’s the one she finds when she walks into The Dead Drop on a Friday afternoon. He’s sitting alone at a booth, rolling a beer between his palms, shreds of the label scattered along the table.

“Jai will kill you for that, you know,” she says, walking behind the bar to open a beer of her own. “It’s a pet peeve.”

Will’s shoulders lift in a half-hearted laugh.

“I’ll hide the evidence.”

His cell is on the table too, though it sits a purposeful distance away from him. His eyes are trained on it, like it might ring under his gaze. 

Frankie knows the feeling.

“Everything okay?” she asks, coming around to the booth.

Will takes a breath, then taps his cell, like he’s coming to a decision. 

“My parents are coming into town.”

“And that’s...bad?”

“Normally, no. Normally, I love having them here. We do all the touristy stuff, see a show, Central Park, the whole thing.”

Frankie can too easily picture him in a foam Lady Liberty crown.

“So what’s the problem?”

Will takes a long drag of his beer, clearing his throat before he speaks again.

“Remember Bulgaria? The selfie we took with baby Will?”

“Hard to forget.”

He smiles a little at that.

“Yeah, so, I told you I was going to send it to my parents right? Tell them I got married, had a kid, it would be a big joke.”

“Right…”

“I may have forgotten to tell them it was a joke.”

Frankie picks the wrong time to take a swig of her beer. 

“Wait,” she sputters. “Wait wait wait, they think we’re--with a--”

“They figured out the baby wasn’t mine pretty quickly. He didn’t have the Chase eyes, the strong jaw--”

“Will--”

“And I debunked the married part over the phone. But they made assumptions about our, uh, relationship status and I didn’t exactly correct them.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I didn’t think they were visiting! I didn’t see the harm in letting them think I was settled and happy, especially after…”

He pauses, picking at the last piece of the beer label.

“Especially after what?”

“After everything with Gigi.”

Frankie doesn’t feel equipped for this, whatever this is. She wishes Susan were here. Hell, she’d take Ray at this point. Anyone to help absorb the blow of whatever emotional bomb is about to go off. 

But it’s just them, and that doesn’t happen very often anymore. Not since London. 

A lot of things are different since London. 

So Frankie grabs two more beers and slides one across the table. 

“Okay, walk me through it.”

\--

It goes like this.

Will meets a girl in Paris. A _coup de foudre_ , she tells him after their first night together--a lightning strike. 

And Will is _struck_.

Never mind that she’s too young, too pretty, and all too eager to let him save her from crushing debt. 

_She’s the one_ , he tells his parents over the phone, explaining why he’s booked them on the next flight to Paris, and why they should bring his grandmother’s ring with them.

They worry. They fight. They refuse.

They don’t talk for a long time.

“After everything went to hell, I flew back to Ohio. It was the only way to get my mom to talk to me, to _look_ at me,” Will says, shaking his head. “I might never forgive Ray, but I know I’ll never forgive myself for what I put them through.”

Frankie takes a slow sip of her beer.

“And lying to them about being in a relationship is the first step toward healing?”

“They think I’m broken. And before you emphatically agree,” he says, holding up a hand. “They’re wrong. Maybe I was, and maybe it took me awhile, but I’m not broken anymore. I’m happy, and that part’s not a lie.”

“So have them meet Emma,” Frankie says. “Use your real relationship. Who cares about the picture? Tell them the lighting was bad and didn’t do her justice.”

“Even if I thought there was any chance of them buying that,” he says with a pointed half-smile. “That’s too much to put on something this new. We’re just...not there. Yet.”

He adds the last part quickly, downing the last of his beer. Frankie looks at her bottle, at the mess she’s made of her own label as they’ve talked. 

“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Will says quietly. “I know I don’t even have the _right_ to ask. But you know that newfound happiness? This team has a lot to do with that. _You_ have a lot to do with that. I’d just...like my parents to see that for themselves.”

Frankie could name a thousand reasons why this is a bad idea. 

She should make him sit there and listen to all of them.

“You’re going to owe me,” she says instead. “So big.”

“The biggest. Name it. Anything.”

“I don’t know yet,” Frankie says, sweeping the label scraps into her palm. “But when I do, it’s non-negotiable. Deal?”

The smile Will gives her is the first real one since she walked in.

“Deal.”

\--

“Have you ever met a guy’s parents before?” Will asks, as he ties his tie in front of the living room mirror. 

Frankie nods from her place at the kitchen counter, chopping a tomato. 

“Once. At his memorial service.”

Will’s stomach drops somewhere around his feet when Frankie bursts out laughing.

“Oh my god, I’m _kidding_. Your face is priceless.”

“Death humor, hilarious. Seriously, though.”

She shakes her head, still laughing.

“No. Never gotten that far in a relationship.”

“I think that might be sadder.”

“Of course you would. Also what did that tie ever do to you?”

Will looks at the crumpled, knotted mess in his hands.

“Here,” Frankie says, and before Will can react, she’s suddenly in front of him, taking the tie from his hands and looping it around his neck. They’ve been closer than this, in significantly tighter spaces, but somehow the middle of his living room--with a Charlie Parker record playing on the turntable and the smell of basil on her hands--feels a thousand times more intimate. 

“My dad taught me,” Frankie says, glancing up at him with a smile that says _before you ask, because I know you’re going to_. “It was part of my uniform in private school, and he thought clip-ons were as bad as cheating.”

“Private school? You contain multitudes, Francesca….Something Trowbridge.”

Frankie keeps her eyes on the Windsor knot she’s expertly tying. 

“Nope.”

“Come on. We’re a couple for tonight. Couples know each other’s middle names. I’ll tell you mine.”

“Pass.”

“It’s Byron. Dad is a poetry buff.”

“William Byron Chase,” Frankie muses, and Will has filed away enough of her looks to know that this one is begrudgingly charmed. “It fits.”

“Thanks, Francesca...Grace.”

“Guess all you want, I’m not telling you. There.” She finishes the knot, then smooths her hand down the tie. There are three layers of fabric under her fingers, but he still feels them all the way to his chest.

“Don’t be nervous,” Frankie says, still close, close enough that her green eyes look hazel in the late afternoon light.

“You’re meeting a guy’s parents for the first time, _you_ should be the nervous one.”

“Why should I be?” she shrugs, returning to the cutting board. “I’m a catch.”

\--

Frankie’s nervous.

She tells herself that it doesn’t matter if Will’s parents like her, because they’re not actually dating, because she’ll likely never see them again after tonight, and because it’s better for Will and Emma if this doesn’t go well. 

But that doesn’t stop the tremble in her hands as she fidgets with her bracelet just as Will buzzes his parents into the building. 

“Just a couple of hours, Francesca Leigh,” Will says, clicking the butterfly clasp into place at her wrist, his thumb lingering at her pulse point for just a beat. “We’ve survived worse.”

Mrs. Chase--”oh honey, call me Beth, Mrs. Chase is my mother-in-law”--pulls Frankie into a bear hug as soon she walks in the door, literally pushing Will aside to get to her. From over his mom’s shoulder, Frankie watches Will shake hands with the man he’s going to be in twenty years; broader, bigger, if not in size but in presence, and greyer, too.

“Now there’s a handshake,” Jack says, clasping Frankie’s hand in both of his. “I bet you’re a hell of an arm wrestler. Will, can we clear a table?”

“Who needs wine?” Will says, already opening a bottle. “Hon, could you get the glasses?” 

Frankie opens the right cabinet on the first try.

\--

Will’s apartment has roof access, and the early spring temperatures are too rare, too good to eat anywhere other than outside. He minds the grill for all of five minutes before his mom takes over.

“How many chances do I get to make a meal for my son?”

“Oh, don’t start. You just don’t trust me not to burn your steak.”

She smiles, glancing back at the table. Will follows her gaze to where Frankie sits with his dad, telling him a story that makes him throw his head back in laughter. She catches Will’s eye across the patio.

He nods in question. She nods back.

It’s been like that all night, silent touch-bases as they set the table, refilled drinks. It started out of concern for their cover, then out of concern for her, and now Will finds that it’s just a habit. A reflex, a natural check-in, and the most surprising part is Frankie doesn’t fight it. She meets him there every time, and the vice of anxiety around his heart releases its grip with every reassuring look, every shared smile. 

“Look at you,” says his mom, in a way that makes him feel like he’s been caught.

“What?” he says, tearing his eyes away from the table. 

“You’re happy.”

“I told you I was.”

“And now I see why. She’s wonderful.”

Will looks down at his wine glass.

“Yeah, she is. But don’t worry, I’m taking it slow.” 

The _this time_ goes unsaid, but hangs between them anyway.

“So slow that you send a picture of you and a new girl and a baby to your parents?”

“It was a joke.”

“I don’t see anyone laughing.” His mother pins him with a look. “Will, what are you so afraid of?”

He doesn’t know anymore.

\--

Frankie learns a lot over the course of dinner.

She learns that Will played exactly five games of tee-ball before asking for piano lessons instead.

She learns that he never needed braces, and that when he was 8, he wanted to be an astronaut. 

Most of all she learns that the reason he believes in true love is that he’s seen it for himself his whole life. 35 years married, 40 together, and Jack still carries their wedding picture in his wallet.

“It’s gross, I know,” Will says, scooping out vanilla ice cream onto plates of peach cobbler while his parents dance to a slow song that isn’t there. “Even grosser at your tenth birthday party when you’re trying to dance to ‘Thriller’.”

“It’s nice,” Frankie says, watching as Jack sends Beth into a theatrical dip. “To not be sick of each other after that long? Gives me hope.”

“Yeah?” Will smiles. “Francesca Jane might settle down someday?”

“You’re relentless.”

“And you’re a mess. How did you manage to get cobbler in your hair?” Will laughs, reaching for a hand towel.

“Probably because you’re wielding that spatula the same way you do a gun.” But she’s laughing too, watching as he methodically pulls oat crumbs from a spot just behind her ear.

Frankie doesn’t know how long they stand like that until there’s a mild catcall from the living room.

“Don’t hold back on our account!”

She expects Will to pull away, but he lifts his eyebrows in a question, and she manages a nod as he cups her face, leans down--and swipes ice cream across her cheek.

“I’m carrying ten different ways to kill you for that,” Frankie says, settling for a hard punch to his shoulder.

“I’ll die happy.”

By the smile on his face, Frankie can almost believe it.

\--

Dessert turns into another bottle of wine and seemingly endless stories from his childhood. Frankie laughs at them all, harder and harder until there are tears in her eyes, her hand braced on his knee for support. 

Will never moves it.

They put his parents into a cab around midnight. There are hugs all around, Will helping his dad into his jacket while his mom says something to Frankie about seeing her soon, meeting Will’s sisters, Christmas in Ohio. 

Will waits for the panic in Frankie’s eyes, but it never comes. Just a small, hopeful smile and an “I’d love that” that’s so genuine, Will has to remind himself that it’s not.

“If you were to ask for your grandmother’s ring now,” his dad says in a low voice, pulling Will into one last hug. “You’d get a very different answer.”

“Dad--”

“No rush. I’m just saying. It’s there when you’re ready.”

Will doesn’t trust himself to say anything, so he just shakes his dad’s hand, kisses his mom on the cheek, and puts an arm around Frankie as they wave goodbye. Once the cab is out of sight, she leans into him, her whole body deflating in relief.

“We survived,” Will says, squeezing her shoulder. She hums in agreement, tilting her head to look up at him. 

“You good?”

“I’m good. Thank you, again. I don’t think I’ve said that enough.”

“You haven’t, but it’s a start.”

They linger on the sidewalk, a weighted silence between them on the too-quiet street.

“You want to come back up?” Will asks, nodding towards the apartment. “I can’t be left alone with the rest of that cobbler.”

Frankie starts to laugh, with a small nod and a half a step toward the building. But she stops, rocking back on her foot, and Will realizes too late what he’s done. Reached out too far, offered more than what he can rightfully give, especially when there’s two texts and a missed call from Emma waiting for him upstairs.

“I should get home,” Frankie says, kind enough not to call him on it. “I’m running with Suze in the morning, so…”

“Yeah, of course.” 

She offers up a hand, and he laughs, returning the high-five.

“Goodnight, Francesca Marie.”

He’s a step away from the building when she calls out, “Rose.”

When he turns back, her expression is unreadable: resignation mixed with something else, something that makes the corners of her mouth turn up.

“It’s my grandmother’s name.”

“Francesca Rose.” Will smiles. “Fitting.”

Frankie rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling, too. 

“Goodnight, William Byron.”

He waits until she turns the corner before he goes inside, ignoring the dishes in the sink and the phone on his nightstand.

Instead he falls back on to his bed and tries not to think of the roses etched into the silver band of his grandmother’s ring. 

**Author's Note:**

> big thanks to bubblegumorthemoon for prompting this in the WC discord; I hope I did it justice!
> 
> auraispurple continues to be the tango to my charlie.


End file.
